The Great I AM

The Great I AM

God Morning everyone! TJIF!! Thank Jesus It’s Friday! Welcome to the Spanduvilous Dailies with me, David Mitchell II, on this Friday February 26, 2010. During my studies one day I came across this scripture and there was something that caught my eye. In Exodus 3:14 it states “And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Israel, I AM hath sent me unto you.” Now in that verse God calls Himself “I AM THAT I AM” and a question dawned on me, why did they use the word “THAT” instead of just saying “I AM” like they did further in that verse? I don’t know, to you it may seem like nothing, but that struck me as kind of odd. So what is “THAT”?

It is defined as: a grammatical word used to indicate somebody or something that has already been mentioned or identified, or something that is understood by both the speaker and the hearer. THAT also means: indicating a familiar person or thing and indicating distance from the speaker.

So from out of the definition of “THAT”, God is saying He is the one that has already been mentioned unto the people that Moses was about to go speak to in this particular verse. His presence has already been established and He has already been announced unto them. He was familiar to them and the obvious distance between the God and the people is pretty evident…so I guess “THAT” was the perfect word to inject in that verse. In addition, by him saying that he’s the “I AM”, he is stating that he is all or everything. That he is anything that has come or will ever come. All things he is. Now lets take this a little further. Just like our name has a meaning or supposed to have a meaning. Well when translated it should read like a divine rule over ones life. So “I AM THAT I AM” should translate into something like this. I am all; everything that has already been mention and identified as familiar that is understood by both the hearers and speakers whom everything is. Now let that soak in for a minute, because I don’t think it can get any deeper than that. My head was hurting just trying to figure it out myself. SO I’m glad the Lord wanted to keep it simple and just say, “I AM THAT I AM”. Please read Exodus 3:14 KJV

And God said unto Moses, I AM THAT I AM: and he said, Thus shalt thou say unto the children of Isreal, I AM hath sent me unto you.